oice choking with passion, and
his eyes grew large and yellow all in a moment, as he pointed with a
trembling finger at a small white thing lying under the tree.

'It's only a rattle,' Alice said, after a careful examination of the
little white thing. 'Not a rattleSNAKE, you know,' she added hastily,
thinking that he was frightened: 'only an old rattle--quite old and
broken.'

'I knew it was!' cried Tweedledum, beginning to stamp about wildly and
tear his hair. 'It's spoilt, of course!' Here he looked at Tweedledee,
who immediately sat down on the ground, and tried to hide himself under
the umbrella.

Alice laid her hand upon his arm, and said in a soothing tone, 'You
needn't be so angry about an old rattle.'

'But it isn't old!' Tweedledum cried, in a greater fury than ever. 'It's
new, I tell you--I bought it yesterday--my nice new RATTLE!' and his
voice rose to a perfect scream.

All this time Tweedledee was trying his best to fold up the umbrella,
with himself in it: which was such an extraordinary thing to do, that it
quite took off Alice's attention from the angry brother. But he couldn't
quite succeed, and it ended in his rolling over, bundled up in the
umbrella, with only his head out: and there he lay, opening and shutting
his mouth and his large eyes--'looking more like a fish than anything
else,' Alice thought.

'Of course you agree to have a battle?' Tweedledum said in a calmer
tone.

'I suppose so,' the other sulkily replied, as he crawled out of the
umbrella: 'only SHE must help us to dress up, you know.'

So the two brothers went off hand-in-hand into the wood, and returned
in a minute with their arms full of things--such as bolsters, blankets,
hearth-rugs, table-cloths, dish-covers and coal-scuttles. 'I hope you're
a good hand at pinning and tying strings?' Tweedledum remarked. 'Every
one of these things has got to go on, somehow or other.'

Alice said afterwards she had never seen such a fuss made about anything
in all her life--the way those two bustled about--and the quantity of
things they put on--and the trouble they gave her in tying strings and
fastening buttons--'Really they'll be more like bundles of old clothes
than anything else, by the time they're ready!' she said to herself, as
she arranged a bolster round the neck of Tweedledee, 'to keep his head
from being cut off,' as he said.

'You know,' he added very gravely, 'it's one of the most serious things
that can possibly happen to